The Old Rectory

The Old Rectory is owned by The London Borough of Sutton and is managed as a community resource housing, Sutton Ecology Centre's meeting room, classroom, reception and offices, Sutton Nature Conservation Volunteers offices and the Meals on Wheels office. It is a Grade 2 listed building, built in about 1710.

Festival Walk, Carshalton, Surrey

The Old Rectory is a Grade 2 listed building, built in about 1710. It is owned by The London Borough of Sutton.

Disabled access

There is an access lift to the ground floor for people who cannot manage the stairs. There is also a multi-access toilet.

This is a small but splendid house which must date from around 1710, although a number of minor irregularities in the design possibly hint at a longer history, The extension on the West Street side is more recent. Note the leaded lights in the front attic windows. In the early eighteenth century sash windows were relatively expensive and were used in the owners rooms rather than the servants attic rooms.

In the late middle ages Carshalton Church belonged to Merton Priory who would have appointed a vicar, paid him a small sum and kept most of the tithe and other income for their institution. After the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII the rectory and the tithes passed through the hands of various laymen until it came into the hands of the Byne family in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. They appear to have been genuinely pious and returned the tithes to the vicar by a series of gifts.

The Rev. William Hollier was the first vicar to benefit from this generosity. He had become vicar in 1703 and by the end of his tenure in 1738 he was styling himself rector. He is the first known occupant of the Old Rectory and it is quite likely that the house was erected for him, and reflected his improved status. The rectory was personal rather than church property and his widow continued to live in it after his death and his successor as rector, Rev. Edmund Lodge, lived elsewhere. The next rector, the Rev. Dr, Gilbert, did live in the Old Rectory. His successor probably lived in the former vicarage which stood somewhere in the vicinity of the Grove and the High Street.

The house subsequently passed through a succession of private owners and tenants. In 1919 it was acquired by a wealthy timber merchant, William J Mallinson, who already owned The Lodge next door. A little later he moved to The Grange in Wallington and the Old Rectory and Lodge were bought to became the Southwark Diocesan House and the College of St Saviour in 1921.

They were bought by Carshalton Council in the mid-1930s. The Old Rectory was used for council offices and became the part of the Ecology Centre in the 1980s.

Most of the interior is poorly preserved although the ground floor has some panels which may date back to the early eighteenth century. The building has an elegant Queen Anne style exterior although it has suffered from some alterations, particularly at the west end